In Crazy Plant Shop, players learn about genes and inheritance by breeding zany plants! Special requests from mysterious customers require players to understand dominant and recessive traits and how genetic traits get passed through generations. Use profits to acquire new breeds, purchase shop upgrades, and acquire new customers!

Buy Crazy Plant Shop

Recommended By Curators

"Learn about genetics by breeding plants while running your own plant shop."

Reviews

“With beautiful graphics, engaging mechanics, and cheeky inside jokes and surprises, kids should be locked in quickly and stick around for the long haul.”
Common Sense Media

About This Game

Become the ultimate botanist by running your own plant shop full of wacky and exotic plants. Whimsical clientele place orders for plants in your catalog, but not all plants you can order have the right traits your customer is looking for in a specimen. It’s up to you to use a special machine in your shop to breed the correct plant with the right traits to complete a customer’s order. Earn gold for each completed order and participate in the World Fair by submitting your best plant specimens. Use your gold to earn upgrades for your shop, and unlock all the species in Crazy Plant Shop to win the game!

Key Features

Learn about plant genetics and heredity by breeding plants to fulfill customer orders

Earn gold for each fulfilled customer order that can be used to upgrade your shop

Participate in local competitions to earn prestige and work your way up to the World’s Fair

Become the ultimate botanist by unlocking all plant species in the game

System Requirements

Minimum:

OS: Windows

Processor: Modern Intel Core series or AMD Athlon processor

Memory: 512 MB RAM

Hard Drive: 130 MB available space

Recommended:

OS: Windows

Processor: Modern Intel Core series or AMD Athlon processor

Memory: 1 MB RAM

Hard Drive: 200 MB available space

The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program contract ED-IES-10-C-0023 to Filament Games. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute of the U.S. Department of Education.

First: this is an educational game that teaches the basics of genetics and plant breeding (dominant/recessive genes); a novel twist on Gregor Mendel's pea plant experiments (who makes an appearance).

Pros: Unlike most children's games, it's gentle and not flashy; there's no hurry to speed through everything, and you really want to double check everything before it goes through (fortunately, the glossary to check scientific terminology is readily available).

Soft pastel colours and a unique art style remind me of children's books of my parents' childhood. A lot of good memories are evoked in this game: the dress style of the characters is a fantastical blend of classical 18th century stiff frocks to a 1930s flapper style, the music is scratchy like an old record and hovers just at the edge of your perception. And I really appreciate well-written characters, subtle storytelling and good voice work: every character was charming and unique to me, and helping them out advanced their one-sided story a little further.

Cons: The game is unforgiving if you burn all your money buying plants instead of breeding them, accepting orders you don't have the energy or money to fulfill, or buying upgrades too early in the game. The 'tutorial' day feels tedious, but it takes two minutes to speed-click through everything. It's also extremely short: a skilled gamer can chew this up in an hour, but the quick end (and super-low price - I bought this at 4 CAD) prevents the game from feeling tedious and worth the money.

Also, I'd shoot the marketer who said "crazy" was a good descriptor for this game.

Crazy Plant Shop actually reminds me a little of Cook Serve Delicious in that "just one more day" sort of addictive way, except it's about efficiency rather than speed. The key is trying to offer your customers the most combinations of plants using the least amount of breeding stock (pedestal space in your store) and mating attempts (energy). It's a fun little casual game that is challenging enough to keep you coming back for more, but not terribly difficult or stressful.

The game uses scientific concepts and terminology, and features the use of Punnett square diagrams to determine the traits of the plants you are breeding to fill customer requests. It would be a great game for kids taking biology classes for the first time, but I think it's still pretty entertaining even for adults who are familiar with the science involved.

The artwork is cute, and the plants are interesting and varied. The music's appropriate, but the voice acting is pretty cheesy and gets repetitive and grating after a while.

Not "crazy" but certainly adorable. The game centers around you being a plant shop owner and you breed plans to have certain traits and it's your basic genetics. It kind of took me back to those times where I had to fill in the squares with what traits would carry on and what not. It was really fun for the few hours I put into it, extremely cute with the nice graphics.

You carry out your day filling orders and breeding plants to make money to buy/unlock more plants and eventually the game ends when you unlock all of the plants and all of the traits. It was cute.

Reccomended for casual gamers or someone just looking for something to do for a few hours.

Essentially, you spend a few hours manipulating Punnett squares to get the traits you want based on the requests of your customers. The gamer in me wanted more to do - randomization, mutations, etc, to get more longevity out the game. But again, it was worth the price.

Biggest flaw was the mediocre voice acting. Some of the characters were better than others, but some of the accents were noticeably fake, and one in particular was inconsistent and couldn't decide what it wanted to be.

I like this game. It's cute, not crazy or hectic. The customers are patient which I like.At first it can be a little challenging. I didn't know much about dominant and recessive traits in plants but this game has a good little dictionary that explains many complicated words so you'll learn while playing. The game is short but I don't mind. It was fun while it lasted.

maybe more something for smaller kids, since its all the same most of the time.

far too easy since you just make 2 plants of each type which are heterogenous in all traits, so you can make every order of that plant out of that pair. takes about 5 minutes to figure out and then repeat for ~1h to win the game.

too simple for adults, but i think quite good for kids to learn some basics about genetics, would recommend for 6-10 year old kids.

Cute, small, well made, puzzle like game. Was meant to be educational, but even though I'm not a child I thoroughly enjoyed it. Works both as an educational game about genes and a cute flower shop puzzle game :)

This game is definitely worth it, especially since it's on sale right now.I beat the game fairly quickly (it only lasts 13 "days"), but I replayed it about 5 times, so that's gotta say something.

The good:-The animation is nice-The music/sound effects are good-It's definitely worth the $4.99 (even better if it's on sale)-The characters are fully voiced-It's very cute-It's mildly educational, I definitely know more about genetics than I did when I started, and I already new a little going into it.-The customers are very patient, you can take all day to serve one if you really want.. however, you won't get a new one unless you accept the current one.-You can check your orders at any time (in case you forgot exactly what plant was needed) and even change which one is your "active" order.-You can upgrade your shop with a few different improvements-Steam trading cards, and achievements.

The bad:-It can be a little confusing at first, especially if you're not familiar with simple genetics-The voice acting isn't the greatest (but at least it exists)-The dialogue (I use the term loosely) gets repetative, and I definitely found myself skipping through what people were saying, and just reading the quick tool-tip about what the order was that I needed to fill.-The tutorial doesn't explain some of the game mechanics, such as switching which order you're currently working on (a minor problem, but it did cause me a few issues)-The competitions you can enter have the same requirements every play-through, so if you have already won it once you can just do the exact same thing next time, and you know you'll win again.-There's no endless mode, or survival mode, or whatever you want to call it. So once the 13 days are up, you have to restart from the beginning if you want to keep playing.

All-in-all this game was well worth the money, and the flaws were very minor. If you're a fan of tycoon-style games you'll most likely get some fun out of this, though it's definitely a lot more calm than some of those types of games. It would be very nice if there was an endless mode after you've beaten it, but even playing from the beginning again is fun, especially since it's fairly quick to play through the 13 days.

While I am a little disappointed that this isn't what I expected (a more freestyle game, where you try to come up with the best selling combination of plant genes), once I got into it I had a lot of fun. It can be a little difficult at first to get a handle on managing finances and how the combinations work, but once everything clicks all you'll have to worry about is running out of space. My thanks to the developers for not including time management in with the other challenges. If I had to handle trying to keep customers happy with timely service on top of figuring out how to make the plants they wanted, I think I would have given up before making it to the end. I look forward to trying to get the remaining achievements.

You should try this game out before judging it.At first, I though this game is casual game like dashing game (Taking order and serve the customer quickly to earn points).But turn out I'm wrong, to play this game you need to know the basic of biology (about breeding plants).You have 12 days (13 days - 1 day tutorial) to run the store and at the end of each day you have to pay your rent.You don't need to accept all orders from the customers, sometime it's wise to just reject the order.By finishing this game you have learn yourself about Dominant - Recessive genes and some economic stuff like how to run a shop.

A game that is more to education and fun to learn deserve an appreciation.I have finished the game and learn how to make a quality seeds.

Learn all about dominant and recessive genes by breeding adorable plants. (Who knew plants could meow or make music!) I admit I had to start the game over quite a few times before I figured out exactly what I needed to do to win. And the game really needs a "skip tutorial" option. Also, once you have a handle on things, it doesn't take that long to beat and grab all the achievements. With that said, I still recommend Crazy Plant Shop. It's cute, it's fun, and it's addictive. Even with all the achievements under my belt, I'm sure I'll still come back and play this again.

I wanted to like this game. It seamed like your typical Japanese import. Do silly tasks usually gardening or fishing involved (in this case gardening) and make your fellow villagers happy. But with this game it's too hard to tell the plant differences in the unblown up version. The time schedule is uncomfortably tight. And there no real ease you into it. Frankly I think they sucked the joy out of it.

Crazy Plant Shop is a botanical genetics lesson disguised as a casual time management game (without the time management).

Though it aspires to be something of an interactive entry course on plant genes and reproduction, its educational value never goes so far as to attempt to beat you over the head with the fact the game is trying to teach you something. It gets its points (for as hyper simplified as they are) across through gameplay hooks rather than walls of text, and it's a surprising amount of fun. It essentially boils down to cross breeding plants while taking into account dominant and recessive genes to produce the traits you need to fill a customer's rather exact and bizarre orders.

It sounds incredibly dull, but in this case breaking things down to their utmost basics actually works in Crazy Plant Shop's favor. Traits are distinct and easy to recognize, with the biggest thing you need to keep tract of being making sure you spreed enough recessive genes around to be able to breed plants with those traits. The lack of any time limit or penalty for refusing orders you can't focus on allows you to take as much time as you need mixing and matching plants, until you've found the right combination and feel like an insane plant matchmaker.

Where the game unfortunately trips over itself a bit is the unexpectedly punishing economy, which I wouldn't hesitate to call broken in most respects. You begin with a limited, finite amount of money to start your botanist career, and ordering plants is expensive and almost never fully compensated by the amount you're paid for fulfilling orders. If you aren't meticulously micromanaging your inventory and making full use of your also limited power for using the breeding machine, you're going to find yourself stuck with no other option but to start the game over. Aside from there being a bit about how breeding plants is cheaper than buying them outright, it was never made clear to me just how exact I needed to be with my orders, and how closely I needed to watch the number of power I had left if I wanted to succeed which led to me being forced into a corner several levels in on my first playthrough with no way out.

Crazy Plant Shop's oddly restrictive monetary systems make playing in it a little more stressful than I was looking for. I wasn't allowed room to experiment because I was so scared of losing all the progress I'd made because I bought one too many plants, and this really hampers and experience that seems designed as a more lighthearted way for people to learn about plants than a typical textbook. Once the game opens up a bit in the later third and puts less pressure on your every decision it was a lot easier to see it as one of the more creative forms of edutainment I've seen. It's just a shame that I'm sure a lot of people won't get that far.

I would have loved to have played this game when I was learning about punnett squares in school and would highly recomend it to anyone currently learning about them. The landlord is Gregor Mendel, THE creator of the punnett squares, which I thought was pretty cool. When there was a word that I haven't seen since school the dictionary option was particuarly helpful. The only downside to the game is that when you finally have 2 of each plant, both having one dominant and one recessive gene for each trait, any combination can be created, thus removing any challenges from the gameplay. Overall I found the game to be entertaining for a day and would recommend it to science/plant enthusiasts.

Although this presents as edutainment, with a lot of crazy $10 science words like "allele" and "phenotype," it plays much more like a fairly unforgiving business sim than a biology lesson.

After a few game days I worked out that most of the customer orders are not just hard or impossible to fulfil, but also involve selling special-order custom items at lower than the wholesale prices for standard varieties. So, the economy is strangely (lovingly caressed) against you. You can decline orders with no consequence as far as I could see, they just keep cycling through until you have the maximum number accepted.

Aside from the business model being odd, the real science of plant breeding is glossed over. I got the idea that some plants are "simple" like sunflowers, and you can just choose through selective breeding whether they shoot sunlight or rainbows, whereas a Pitcher Plant is more complex with variables such as whether it holds a hot or cold beverage and if it has a sippy-cup or a lid, but you choose those traits by clicking on a button and it doesn't explain anything about how to actually do that to your Mom's houseplants.

Good points: for one there's no time pressure, just resource juggling. Also I did feel a genuinely heartwarming moment when, after days of fighting foreclosure, no money in the bank, no credit available and no way to fulfil paying customer orders I was able to waste my last 6 Gold Coins on a stock bunch of white daisies to sell for 3 Gold Coins to some scruffy street urchins who needed a break. The smiles made my day and the business turned around from that moment. So the Karma Simulation seems solid.

Upgrades to the store itself are unlocked very early and I strongly recommend getting the Breeding Machine Power Upgrade asap, as that is the only possible source of profit as far as I can see - the machine manufactures new plants at no Gold cost and the number of uses refills each day (starting on the day AFTER you buy it, I think.)

Graphics are excellent, hand-painted stuff in the ballpark of Bastion and nice animated, the sound's fine but the voice acting is patchy and amateurish, it seems like a port of tablet game but runs fine on my Windows 7-64 rig.

Not sure if "terrible fake accents" is a good or a bad thing but it has that too. Also a Catctus... I mean a cactus shaped like a cat, in Spiky or Fluffy varieties. There are rabbit and chicken plants too.

I really enjoyed this game. As a Biology grad, it was pretty simple once you figure out the controls. It's kinda hard at first to manage the financial but once you figure out what you need to do, it's simple. The game is a fun way to relax. I would recommend this game if you can get it for cheap.

This game is cute and charming. People come in and order plants, and you have to satisfy the orders by breeding plants with certain traits. You have a limited amount of energy and money to spend each day. For some reason all of the characters are either southern or German. Some of the accents are really corny, but overall I liked the game. Would recommend as a light diversion for adults or an educational game for kids.

Crazy Plant Shop is a decently entertaining game for a short amount of time, but is not by any stretch of your imagination worth paying for. As a game, it falls in the middle range of quality of games you could find easily for free on Kongregate or similar sites.

First off, there is a very small selection of poor music. The voice acting is limited and at times cringe-worthy. There is only one game mode- a 13 day challenge to obtain all the plant types. There is no way to buy extra plant slots. Waiting on your character to walk around for everything and for the plant breeding machine to go ding takes up far too much time, which is pointless because the days are not on a timer. There is no penalty for rejecting customers or failing customers' orders that you accepted.

Ultimately, there is just very little to this game. It's good, but there needs to be MORE. I can find good little games all day for free, and most of them have more depth and keep me entertained longer than Crazy Plant Shop could ever hope to.

As a warning, note that there is no cross-breeding plants to create new, strange species. So if that's what you want to get the game for, don't bother.